they nourish them in abundance, often prefer
ring remembering to living."
The eminent geneticist Steve Jones suggests
that even at a genetic level the Welsh have stub
bornly clung to a distinctive identity. "We have
been doing some work on one particular set of
genes," he said, as we clambered to the top of
Pen Dinas, an Iron Age hill fort overlooking the
seaside town of Aberystwyth. An elfin man
with darting brown eyes, Jones was born here
but now divides his time between France and
London, where he is professor of genetics at
University College. "We drew a line from East
Anglia across England then across the border
into north Wales to Anglesey. Then we col
lected saliva samples from schoolchildren
along that line and analyzed their DNA."
The findings surprised Jones. "There is a Y
80
chromosome that is quite rare in England and
Europe but common in Wales-I've got it
myself-above all in west Wales. It has been
passed from father to son to grandson." We had
reached the top of the hill and stood looking
across Cardigan Bay toward Ireland.
A Celtic gene? Not according to Jones. "The
Celts were defined from artifacts found in
northern Italy and southern Germany. The
link of the Welsh Y chromosome is not with
those who see themselves as real Celts but with
the Basques in northern Spain." The Welsh,
like the Basques, says Jones, are the descen
dants of Europe's aboriginal inhabitants, who
were pushed to the mountainous periphery
of the continent some 5,000 years ago by the
people that came to be known as Celts. "The
Basques kept their genes and their language,
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, JUNE 2001